An Italian man named Massimo was inspired to create a map showing the Pangea landmass with today’s political borders. This is a fascinating exercise in understanding the connections between shapes & terrains on the Earth, on both how they do, and do not, interconnect.

Connecticut near Morocco

When I was a child, I’d pore over maps & was fascinated by how the east coast of South America seemed to neatly mirror the west coast of Africa. I knew about tectonic plates, but this was before I’d heard of the ultimate origin of today’s landmasses.

The San Francisco International Airport ran an exhbition recently called “When Art Rocked”, a collection of psychedelic rock posters of the 1960s.

Personally, Polish movie posters are more to my taste, but this has a personal connection. My father-in-law, Frank Saul, is prominently displayed, having been photographed in one of the most iconic images of the 20th century. A physical anthropoligist by training, he was helping design space suits (or what were called “extreme high-altitude suits” back then), and the light source helped map people for the close-fitting garments they have to wear.

It’s Frank!

We’ve got that 13th-Floor Elevators poster up in our house, in fact. How strange seeing it in its full context!

Over at Thought Catalog, Mark Dery interviews Kim Carsons about 19th-century medical illustrations. It’s a fascinating subject, and particularly interesting when you see how different artists attempted to convey vital information over time. (The pre-19th-century Japanese example depicting smallpox is particularly interesting). I found the image of a woman who had contracted cholera fascinating. Supposedly within an hour, the disease ravaged her. I took the trouble of taking the ‘before-and-after’ imagery & combined them in an animated GIF.